


entitled to some happiness

by anabel



Series: the golden boys [1]
Category: Baseball RPF, National Football League RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Closeted Character, Coming Out, First Time, M/M, Pat Mahomes Plays Baseball
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:49:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27256729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anabel/pseuds/anabel
Summary: Aaron Rodgers can't stop watching the World Series, or the Brewers' wunderkind pitcher, Patrick Mahomes.
Relationships: Patrick Mahomes/Aaron Rodgers
Series: the golden boys [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2088150
Comments: 25
Kudos: 57
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	entitled to some happiness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohtempora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohtempora/gifts).



> Dearest recipient:
> 
> Your prompts were so scrumptious and this pairing was so much fun that I, uh, may have gone slightly overboard. 😅 Please don't feel like you have to comment quickly - I know Christmas is a busy time and I wrote a lot of words, between this fic and the treats! I just hope you enjoy spending some time with Aaron and Pat as much as I did. ❤
> 
> Love, your secret anonymous author

The first time Aaron jerks off to Patrick Mahomes’ smile, it’s Game 2 of the 2018 World Series. 

Top of the ninth, Brewers nursing a 2-0 lead, pitcher’s spot in the batting order. If their pitcher wasn’t working on a no-hitter, he’d be yanked for a pinch-hitter in a heartbeat. Instead, he comes up to the batter’s box, grimacing intensely. 

(Aaron’s not much for baseball, not usually. But he was bored tonight, nothing to do except watch game film, and when two of his teammates texted him about the no-hitter in progress, he turned it on. Whatever the sport, he always gets a rush of adrenaline from championship games. When the universe made Aaron Rodgers, it made him with a competitive edge sharp enough to cut diamonds.)

The pitcher at bat is young, focused, honed in on his opposite number; Craig Kimbrel is canny, sharp, and extremely good. This kid Mahomes will be lucky to get bat on ball at all, much less actually score a hit. Not that pitchers are really expected to get hits anyway.

(The part of Aaron’s brain that he usually tries to ignore helpfully points out to him that Mahomes is cute in a dorky way. Ten years ago, he would have shoved the thought away in a panic. Now he just acknowledges it wearily, with an ache of long standing.)

Kimbrel has Mahomes on two strikes, winds up for his third pitch.

(What use is it to notice Mahomes’ attractiveness? It doesn’t change reality. It doesn’t change the League.)

Kimbrel lets the ball go. It speeds towards the plate, a strikeout in the making. Mahomes swings.

The crack jolts Aaron upright. 

He watches, as if in slow motion, as the ball arcs up into the night. Bradley is speeding towards the wall, but there’s never any question, that ball isn’t going into his glove. Fenway Park is exploding with dismay and noise, and Aaron grins, shark-sharp, as the ball lands several rows back, smack in the mitt of a tiny fan with pigtails. 

Aaron may not be one for baseball, but he knows the look on Mahomes’ face. That’s the look he’s felt on his own face when he rushes for a touchdown, or throws a perfect block, or tackles someone after a turnover. That’s the look of _I’m not just the coddled superstar who can only play my position. I can play fucking **ball**._

And then Mahomes’ face changes, as he rounds second base.

Aaron’s expecting more intensity, a passionate fist-pump or two perhaps. Like calls to like, and he could feel Mahomes’ intensity pulsing through his television screen from the moment he’d first stepped up to bat. That’s the kind of player whose joy is expressed through screamed epithets and motivational mantras delivered at frighteningly high volume. Aaron’s been there himself, and he has teammates like that; he knows what it’s like to play so hard that everything comes at you in hyperspeed and hypercolor, and all that’s left for you to do is shout back at the universe in sheer furious ecstasy.

Except it turns out Mahomes isn’t that type of player after all. 

Mahomes rounds second, and suddenly his face changes. He looks up, looks up at the stadium and the upset crowd and the scoreboard which now reads 3-0, and he smiles. 

It’s not mean, or passive-aggressive, or schadenfreudy, or self-satisfied, or any of the feelings Aaron thinks he might be feeling in Mahomes’ shoes. Surrounded by a sea of hostile fans, pitching for an underdog team which wasn’t given a chance in this series, three outs away from a no-hitter, _and_ hitting a home run as a pitcher? There would have been an edge to Aaron’s smile for sure. He’s in his thirties now, which means he’s well aware of his own character flaws, and a tendency to gloat is one of them. 

_Mahomes’_ smile is uncomplicated, free, and joyful. His heart is on his face for anyone to see, simple and unfettered. He looks like a kid in Little League who just hit his first home run, like a teenager who just got drafted into the big leagues, like a rookie who just took his first pro at bat. He looks like Aaron remembers feeling once upon a time, before he got old and embittered and cynical, before he realized that he was caught in a gilded cage but liked his life too much to pick the lock. He looks… utterly and completely beautiful.

Mahomes smiles like that, and Aaron’s hand is down his sweatpants before he’s even realized it. 

(Final score: 3-0 Brewers. Patrick Mahomes no-hit the strongly-favored Red Sox in their own stadium, and contributed a solo home run in the ninth. World Series tied, 1-1.)

~*~

“That Mahomes kid is something special,” Jaire says, shaking his head, before it disappears into the jersey he’s pulling on.

They’re coming off the bye week at 3-2-1, scrapping hard for every win (the 22-0 blowout of Buffalo aside), and the mood in the locker room is upbeat for a team squarely in the middle of the pack. Almost surprisingly so, when you take into consideration their upcoming opponent, the undefeated Rams. (But to hear the Packers locker room talk, the Rams are a paper tiger. Aaron wishes he shared their optimism.)

“He played ball, you know.” That’s Davante, stretching on the floor. Davante never stops stretching, and more than once Aaron’s nearly tripped over him. He’s learned to look before he backs up. “May have had a Dad in the majors, but Pat played football too. Almost chose it in college.”

“Wrong choice,” Jaire says, with the easy confidence of a superstar rookie who thinks the NFL is the pinnacle of sporting achievement.

And maybe it is; Aaron certainly thought so once. Having reached the ancient summit of wisdom that is his thirties, he’s no longer so sure. 

“Who wants to play _baseball_ ,” Jaire is saying, raising his voice to be heard over Bakhtiari’s music, which he’s cranked up high. “But Mahomes is fucking good. Bet he woulda made the League.”

Aaron has a flash of Pat in a Packers uniform, focused and intense in the huddle, trotting off to get set. Or maybe he would have been a quarterback too, maybe he would’ve been one of Aaron’s rivals, setting up shop in Minnesota or Chicago or Detroit. Aaron imagines Pat wearing Vikings purple, smiling at him with _that smile_ , and has a momentary panic when he thinks he’s about to get a very confused and inappropriate boner, right in the middle of his own locker room.

Praise almighty, the feeling subsides, and nobody seems to have noticed. “Hope they win,” he says, a little too abruptly. “Always gotta root for the underdog.”

“You just don’t want Tom Brady to be happy,” Cobb accuses from across the room, which is -- not entirely a lie.

~*~

Aaron watches bits and pieces of Game 3. He puts it on his laptop and sets it on the kitchen counter where he can see it as he dices onions. They make him cry, every time, but food is nothing without onions. He may faithfully follow every instruction and every macro his nutritionist lays down for him, because Optimizing Your Life is a thing he has to do now that he’s old as fuck, but he’ll be damned if he’s giving up _all_ flavor.

While he dices onions and keeps half an eye on the game, he calls his girlfriend.

“Hello, Aaron.” Her voice sounds tinny over the speaker, far away.

“Hi, Dan.”

Mahomes is in the dugout, leaning on the rail and watching with that supreme focus of his. Twenty-three years old and already a rising superstar; not uncommon in football, but uncommon in baseball. Aaron remembers being that young, a lifetime ago.

“How are you doing?”

“Fine,” Aaron says. Fine is…accurate. The season is going to be a struggle, he can tell that already, but he’s got a fighting chance. He only has a few seasons left in the tank, so he’s going to work like hell to make the most of them. He doesn’t want any regrets. “You?”

“Fine.”

Aaron dumps his onions in the pan, where they sizzle. On screen, a teammate leans in to say something to Mahomes, and the kid throws back his head and laughs, unselfconscious. His face is so open, so unprotected, and something in Aaron’s chest clenches. He finds that his hand is fisted in his apron, white-knuckled, and he lets go deliberately.

“So why did you call?” Danica asks.

“A guy can’t call his girlfriend?”

Danica sighs. “Aaron.”

He likes Danica. She’s a badass. She has a dry sense of humor, that turns wicked in private. He likes tossing her the keys and jumping in the passenger seat, watching her whip in and out of traffic just to indulge him, even though she protests that her work isn’t about that. He likes the way she makes coffee, and the way she’s comically grumpy until after she’s had her breakfast, and the way she wrinkles her nose when an over-eager fan jumps them for a picture. 

And Aaron likes the way she makes the world see exactly what it expects to see, and no more.

“I’m just tired,” he says, feeling the abruptness on his tongue. “Tired of being…me.”

Danica knows what he means. Danica’s known what she was getting into from the beginning. _Danica_ had a choice. 

“Well, you’re stuck with being you, sunshine,” Danica says, tart.

Aaron leans his forehead against a sterile white cupboard for a moment. “I wonder sometimes if it’s all worth it. If I should just…stop.”

Stop the act. Stop playing America’s Golden Boy. Stop being the all-American hero, the squeaky clean juxtaposition to Tom “deflategate cheater” Brady and Peyton “probably took steroids” Manning. Stop trying to appeal to a restive fanbase, half of which were already discontented with “politics in my football” and more of which would be shocked at Aaron’s full truth.

Danica sighs again, the sound gusty over the mic. “Look. You know I've got your back. But you also know that I think you should get over yourself already. I’m tired of you going around in circles about this for the fortieth time. Some of us are getting old here.”

Fortieth. Little does she know. It’s been long since forty.

“It’s just a few more years,” Aaron says. “A few more years without distractions. Then football’s over, forever.”

“Then why do you sound so miserable?”

Aaron has no answer for that. He doesn’t feel miserable. He doesn’t feel …much of anything. Not here, in his silent house, with no football and no teammates. He watches his onions cook.

“If you want to keep hiding, I’ll keep helping make it easier,” Danica says, when he doesn’t answer her. “But I want you to be happy. Think about whether you’re happy, Aaron. It matters. God knows our lives are short enough. It matters.”

Aaron watches Mahomes clap a teammate on the shoulder as the guy comes in after scoring a run. Mahomes’ smile is incandescent.

He turns back to his pan and stirs, his eyes still smarting from the onions.

(Final score: 9-6 Boston. A high-scoring game that they broke open late, after Aaron went to bed. Boston leads the series, 2-1.)

~*~

Aaron’s never been a stereotypical gay guy.

For one thing, that’s because for most of his life he thought he wasn’t. First, he believed his childhood upbringing, which said that gay thoughts were from the Devil and could be conquered with prayer and self-restraint. Then, he thought he was bisexual, and tried his damndest to choose the easier path, working to steer his brain with copious boobs. Only in the last few years has he slowly come to accept the truth: there is no easier path, not for him. If he can’t get it up for Danica fucking Patrick, he can’t pretend to himself any longer. He’s gay.

And that’s… he’s not a self-loathing man, he’s not. He doesn’t have a problem with gay people, or with himself for being gay. He just – knows how much easier it would be if he wasn’t. Knows how hard the league is for anyone with even a hint of anything less than macho. Knows that America may be getting safer and more accepting, but he still hears the slurs shouted by drunken idiots, still sees the homophobic abuse online whenever anyone dares to suggest that gay people might play football. Knows that people might tolerate the nice lesbian ladies down the street having a Pinterest wedding, but that doesn’t mean they’d accept a Straight Masculine Football Icon declaring that he actually liked sucking cock, thanks very much.

(Not that Aaron has first-hand experience with the whole cock thing. Not when he’s guarded this secret for two decades, first to get to the NFL, then to stay in it, then to rule it. How can he put his private lusts first, or risk exposure?)

Aaron should be in bed. It’s gameday tomorrow, and the undefeated Rams wait for him. 

Mahomes is hanging on the rail again, living and dying by every at-bat. They’re in the 15th inning now, tied at 2-2, have been since the 13th, when they each added a run to the score. Aaron wonders how much longer it can go on, poised at this intense level. Men aren’t gods, they tire. There are only so many pitchers in those bullpens.

He watches Mahomes, every time the camera goes to the Brewers dugout. The man is front and center, the visible avatar of a city fierce with longing for its first championship. If they pull this out, if this plucky team knocks off the fearsome Sox, Mahomes is never going to pay for a drink again. Aaron feels it in his bones, this instinct for stardom, the same way he felt it about himself, when he took his team from the faltering hands of a legend, and never looked back.

Aaron wonders what Mahomes would look like on his knees.

He never usually does this – he read an article once about how abstinence the night before a game is good for testosterone levels – but who knows, that might actually be junk science anyway, and Mahomes is… he’s right there, with that face, and that smile. Aaron hasn’t felt this kind of instant attraction to someone since he had an entirely inappropriate crush on Trae Waynes, which, a, cornerback, b, _Viking_ cornerback, c, Viking cornerback who has a bad habit of intercepting him. Aaron had been disgusted by his dick’s lack of taste.

But there’s no purple stain on Mahomes, just the way he claps for his teammates, throwing his whole body into it, and the way he holds his breath when a foul ball almost sneaks into fair territory, and the way he smiles when Dozier steals a base.

Aaron fists his dick, already close, and imagines Mahomes kneeling between his thighs, looking up at him through his eyelashes, smiling that smile against Aaron’s dick – and he’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone.

He watches the whole game, all eighteen innings, the longest game in World Series history, and when it finally finishes, he falls asleep with Mahomes’ joy burned into his brain.

(Final score: 3-2 Brewers. Orlando Arcia hits a walkoff homer in the bottom of the 18th to tie the series at 2-all.)

~*~

Fuck the Rams, fuck Aaron Donald specifically and with a rusty cactus, and fuck Ty Montgomery for fucking fumbling on a fucking kickoff return when they would’ve had two minutes for a game-winning drive if he had fucking listened to his fucking instructions and taken a FUCKING KNEE for the touchback. But oh no, Ty just had to try to run it back, even though he’d been _specifically told_ to take the touchback, and _of course_ he got fucking crushed at the 20-yard line and meekly coughed up the ball, and that was the game.

Two minutes. Aaron would have had two whole minutes to get a measly field goal to win the game, and all he’d needed was that touchback. He would’ve done it, would’ve knocked the Rams down a peg and given them their first loss of the year, would’ve notched another huge comeback on his Hall of Fame resume, would’ve given his team momentum and morale going into next week’s big test in Foxborough. 

But thanks to Ty, they’re 3-3-1, and the Rams are 8-0, and Aaron just had to sit through a miserable cross-country flight, the whole plane silent as the grave, licking their wounds.

His house seems emptier than ever, and he barely stops to check the World Series score before heading to bed. Looks like Mahomes had as bad a day as he did.

(Final score: 5-1 Boston, with David Price doing David Price things and stymieing the Brewers hitters. Heading back to Fenway, Boston leads the series 3-2, and is one game away.)

~*~

Aaron takes a break from hate-watching Patriots game film to make a protein shake. He turns on ESPN, but they’re talking about the Packers game yesterday (of course they are), and he turns it off. He thinks about calling his mother, which he tries to do once a month despite the estrangement, but in the mood he’s been in, he’s in no shape for the delicate tightrope walk those conversations are. He could call Danica again, but she’d ask why he was calling, and telling your girlfriend you can’t get this guy out of your head is bad manners, even if she’s less of a girlfriend and more of a longsuffering friend. (Also, if he knows Danica, she’d try to get him Mahomes’ number, which is a frightening thought.)

He ends up surfing the web while he drinks his protein shake. Mahomes was a quarterback, he finds out. A highly-rated quarterback; he could’ve gone either way in college, just like Davante said. But he chose baseball, chose to hang up his helmet and pick up his glove, chose to follow his dad to the major leagues. Aaron watches a fresh-faced collegiate Mahomes being drafted by the Brewers, hugging his parents, beaming that smile. Watches clips of Mahomes as he rocketed through the minor leagues, destroying his competition. Watches the interview of Mahomes after the Brewers called him up earlier this year, with Mahomes blitzed out of his mind on happiness, his derpy dorky smile on full display.

The kid’s 23 years old, and he no-hit the Red Sox in Fenway Park in the World Series, and tomorrow he’s going to pitch to keep the Brewers alive. Win or go home. Win and give yourself a chance for the crown. Win. Just win. Always win.

Aaron remembers back when it was that simple for him. Still is, in a way. But now there’s so much layered on top of it, so much responsibility and drama and angst, so much weight on his shoulders and so many years in the curve of his spine. He’s lost a Super Bowl run to blind chance (fucking coin toss in overtime). He lost last season to a snapped collarbone (fucking Anthony Barr). He’s lost more than he’s won, in the grand scheme of things; for all that he’s one of the greatest players of all time, and has put together some of the greatest teams of all time, he’s only won one ring. One solitary ring, one solitary moment of contentment, when Tom Brady can barely fit all of his on one hand.

Aaron wishes it was still that simple. Imagines a world in which it was, one where he could get Mahomes’ number and ask him out, one where he could try to make Mahomes smile like that, and then dare to lean in and kiss the smile off his face. Imagines a world where he could take Mahomes out on the town, arm in arm, could introduce Mahomes to his team as his guy, could go to each other’s games and cheer each other on. Imagines a world where it didn’t matter that no active NFL player had ever been brave enough to come out while playing in the League, and where nobody talked about coming out with words like “brave” and “trailblazing” and “first”. 

It’s a pretty pipedream. Aaron drinks the rest of his shake, closes his search results, and goes back to his game film.

~*~

Bakhtiari slings a companionable arm over his shoulders after practice. “Want to come over tonight and play Catan?”

Bakhtiari’s board-game nights are legendary, and not just because he and his girlfriend are excellent cooks and keep the wine flowing. Aaron’s seen more than one friendship be tested by the vicissitudes of resource trading, unequal use of the robber, and titanic struggles for the Longest Road. (He himself always tries to become a sheep baron. Let others fight over roadbuilding, he’s going to be sitting over in the corner with the sheep port and a bajillion victory point cards.)

“Not tonight,” he says. “World Series.”

“We’ll put the game on in the background,” Bakhtiari offers, but reads his answer in Aaron’s face. “All right, fine, I’ll go ask Cobb.”

Cobb’s a vicious Catan player. Aaron knows. He didn’t speak to Cobb for a whole three days once after Cobb wouldn’t take the robber off his sheep, and he was in Cobb’s fucking wedding.

Instead of subjecting himself to a repeat of that travesty, later that day he cracks open a bottle of white and settles into his couch for an evening of baseball. Usually he’d find the prospect interminable – Jordy always used to say that baseball was more fun to play, but football was more fun to watch, and Aaron can see that – but today Mahomes is on the mound, and Aaron doesn’t anticipate being bored. Game 6, and fighting to make it to Game 7. Fenway Park, tense and boisterous and drunk. Underdog vs champion, youth vs experience. 

He sips his wine and watches Mahomes go to work, that smile tucked away for later and the intensity front and center. The man’s tall, strong, well-built; he looks like he could take a hit and bounce up ready for more, looks like a football player on that mound. When he goes into his motion, he’s a picture of easy grace and coiled power, exploding in controlled release. His fastball practically zings, leaving little heat cartoons in its wake, and the Red Sox don’t seem to have its number. Aaron smirks. 

This isn’t going to be as easy a win as Game 2’s no-hitter. The Sox have come in baying for blood, the taste of the champagne already on their lips. They’re high on momentum, hungry for the kill, and Mahomes has runners on base in both of the first two innings. A clutch double-play saves him once, and the second time he leaps to the side to snag a rocket out of mid-air, reflexes preventing a score.

But he settles down after that, and the game goes into slow burn, the innings ticking slowly away, neither team able to get a man past first. Aaron finds himself forgetting to breathe sometimes, his wine long gone but the stem of the glass still clutched in his fingers. He puts it down, forces breath back into his lungs. Mahomes winds up again, throws a strike. The catcher throws it back. Mahomes gets set – then checks to first, the runner diving back. The game of cat and mouse, the rhythm of baseball that’s so much slower, so much more chess-like, than football. Sometimes Aaron can understand why people find it so mesmerizing, despite the glacial pace. Sometimes he can see why people crave it; this gentler, almost throwback game.

In another world, maybe Aaron chose baseball in high school, instead of quitting after Little League. Maybe he was an earlier bloomer in baseball, maybe his height and size was less of a barrier. After all, a 5’10”, 165lb shortstop was less of a problem than a 5’10”, 165lb quarterback, who quite legitimately might get murdered on the field by an over-aggressive linebacker. Maybe better colleges recruited him, maybe he didn’t have to play for a tiny community college in his own backyard. Maybe eighteen-year-old shortstop Aaron went to college in a big city, and learned to be free before he learned to be afraid. Maybe he kissed boys, and indulged his love of theatre, and balanced baseball with life; maybe he got drafted, and worked his way through the minor leagues, and grew up a little before he was faced with fame. Maybe he played shortstop for the Brewers, and then one year a young pitcher came along, who smiled at his jokes and made his heart skip a beat, and maybe that was all right in baseball. Maybe baseball was kind.

Mahomes is cruising now, setting down the Boston lineup with almost dismissive ease. He’s too green to know how rare this is, finding your stride at the perfect moment. Too new to know that he may never catch this lightning in a bottle again, that for the rest of his career he will give everything in his body and everything in his soul to taste it just one more time. Too young to know that his untainted joy will firm into unshakeable resolve, with only himself to know just what he’s lost.

Or maybe baseball has happy endings.

Mahomes at bat, with a man on first, and Aaron knows better than to hope for another home run. That doesn’t happen twice, not to pitchers. He’s still on the edge of his seat, still clutching his second glass of wine (reckless in a way he never usually is during the season, but tonight is special). “C’mon,” he says, under his breath, willing the beautiful wunderkind on his screen to crush the ball out of the park, willing the Hollywood ending that the world doesn’t supply. “C’mon, dammit.”

The pitch flies – and Mahomes shows bunt, knocking the ball into the grass and taking off for first. He’s not particularly fast, pitchers don’t need to be, but he’s gamely giving it his all, motoring down the line to sell the sacrifice and get his guy over to second. The third baseman comes in for the ball, snags it, fires over to first – and Aaron’s laughing, laughing with the sheer unexpected joy of it, because he _misses_ , he fucking overthrows that easy throw, and it whizzes past the first baseman (who looks completely befuddled).

“Go!” Aaron shouts, and he’s on his feet, he doesn’t know how that happened. He’s not yelling at Mahomes, who’s smartly stopped at first base, but at the other Brewer, who’s speeding to third like his life is at stake. The first baseman’s located the ball and is firing it over, but it’s too little too late – the Brewer slides into third just ahead of the ball’s arrival, and they’ve got men on first and third with no outs. 

Complicated decision coming, with a star pitcher on base in a tight game. It’s only the 5th inning, and Mahomes isn’t on short rest. He’s shown he can go the distance, and the more they can save the bullpen today, the more they’ll be rested for a potential Game 7 tomorrow. But on the other hand, it’s a 0-0 tie – if they put a speedy pinch-runner in for Mahomes, he could steal second, or go from first to third on a single. They need every run they can get. But on the other hand, what use are runs, if they put in a pitcher who gives up more? But on the other hand, if Mahomes injures himself trying to be a hero baserunning, they’ll have to put in another pitcher anyway.

Mahomes doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere. He’s standing on first grinning from ear to ear. Aaron grins back at him, feeling uncomplicated and exultant. When no pinch-runner appears from the Brewers dugout, Aaron gives a little fist-pump and settles back into his couch. 

Instead, Cora appears from the Sox dugout. They’re pulling their pitcher, getting a new guy to face Cain. Pitching changes always take a little while, and Aaron watches Mahomes trying to stay loose on first base, stretching and chatting to the first baseman. If looks are any indication, he might be giving him a friendly ribbing about the fielding error (though that was the third baseman’s fault, Aaron adds fairly). 

Aaron’s had two glasses of wine, and though he’s not a lightweight, he’s pleasantly buzzed on alcohol and adrenaline. Later, that’s what he’ll chalk this decision up to. At the time, he just does it, without much thought at all.

_Hey. Do you know anyone on the Brewers?_

He fires the text off, lets his head thunk back to rest on the back of his couch. Maybe he needs to get a cat, he thinks. A cat would be good company on nights like this. Or a dog. A nice dog. An asshole cat and a nice dog. 

Danica’s reply is immediate. The new pitcher’s only just finishing his warmup. _Why?_

He thinks about saying he had an idea for a charity function. He could come up with three ideas at the drop of a hat. That’s one of the best parts about fame, honestly, being able to use it for good. 

But Danica is a nice person, and the best fake girlfriend a guy could ask for, and she’s someone he _can_ tell the truth to, which makes her rare indeed.

_Mahomes is cute._

Has he actually just typed and sent that off, rashly, into the ether? What if Roger Goodell manifests in his living room right now and demands his phone? He’d have to smash it like Brady did, and he doesn’t know if he has anything in the house to smash it with. Now this is when playing baseball would come in handy, they must have bats in every room of their house.

 _Not my type,_ Danica shoots back, and Aaron laughs.

 _Mine,_ he replies, because in for a penny, in for a pound.

Cain’s at bat now, settling in. Aaron watches intently, his eyes glued not to the pitcher or the batter, opposing duelists locked in combat, but to the gangly figure in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, poised for flight.

The new pitcher’s skittish, dancing around the edges of the plate, and though Cain fouls off one offering, the rest miss. He walks on five pitches. Mahomes moves to second, an easy jog.

And now Aaron’s on the edge of his seat, because it’s Christian Yelich at the plate, and even though Aaron doesn’t usually pay much attention to baseball, he knows that name. He knows that Yelich is almost sure to win NL MVP, he knows that Yelich almost won the triple crown this year. He watches ESPN, he knows things. If anyone can hit a grand slam right here, right now, it’s Christian Yelich.

His phone buzzes, but Aaron can’t spare the moment to check it.

Mahomes is at second, the smile gone. This is it. 

Yelich swings at the first pitch, a beauty of a swing, a good connection. The ball soars – foul.

Aaron’s phone buzzes again.

Wide outside. The count goes to 1-1.

“C’mon,” Aaron whispers, under his breath. “C’mon.” 

Yelich connects, and this time the ball doesn’t go foul. It goes down the line in right, and Aaron knows from the moment it leaves Yelich’s bat that it’s a good one. 

He’s on his feet again, and Mahomes is running, running like it’s the World Series and the fate of his season might rest on this one play. Aaron knows this run, knows the feeling of his heart in his throat and his blood rushing high, knows the joy and the agony and the _focus_ , above all the focus. He’s willing Mahomes on, willing him to run, willing his feet faster – and then Mahomes is rounding third, the third-base coach windmilling him home, and Mahomes is flying, flying down the line, and he’s touching the plate, he’s safe, the throw isn’t even near him yet, and Cain is coming in behind him, Yelich making it to third on a stand-up triple, and Mahomes is in Cain’s arms, jumping and shouting and smiling so widely that his face looks like it’s going to burst, and Aaron is lucky he lives alone in a big house with his neighbors at a distance, because he’s making a bit of noise himself.

After it all settles down, and Yelich comes home on a sacrifice fly, and the rest of the inning is more sedate, and they go to commercial with the Brewers up 4-0, Aaron finally remembers to look at his phone.

Danica’s first text: _Are you just fucking with me, or are you actually gonna do something?_

Then the second text: _I don’t know either way about Pat. He doesn’t have a girlfriend afaik. But are you brave enough?_

 _Fuck you, it’s not about bravery,_ is his immediate reaction. But he pinches his nose between thumb and forefinger, and scowls at his own commercial which has just popped up on the TV, and doesn’t send that to her. Instead he erases it, and sends _I just want to say hi._

Danica doesn’t respond for a while. Mahomes comes back to the mound and records three more outs, with almost clinical precision. They’re through the sixth. Only three more innings to go.

Aaron can’t imagine the psychological toll it must take, doing this every night. Once a week already exhausts him enough. Maybe it’s only this stressful in the postseason – but still! If he had to play a best-of-seven series against Tom Fucking Brady, seven games in nine days or less, he might seriously go around the bend.

Mahomes doesn’t look like he’s going around the bend. He looks serene. Aaron watches the curve of his jaw, the way he holds his head.

It’s the eighth inning before Mahomes is done. He nods to the camera, hand on his heart, smiling that smile, and Aaron knows Milwaukee’s lost their heart to him, just like he owns Green Bay’s. Prepare for Mahomes-mania.

His phone buzzes. _I’ll see what I can do._

That’s all Aaron can ask for. 

(Final score: 4-1 Brewers, with the Sox getting a solo homer in the ninth. The series is tied at 3-all, and is headed for a deciding Game 7.)

~*~

Aaron’s in the middle of a pre-practice text feud with Jordy – don’t ask, it involves offensive linemen and the differences between the Packers and Jordy’s new Raiders – when his phone rings.

He picks up on the first ring. “I just don’t buy it. There’s no way in hell anyone could have worse farts than Bulaga.”

“Um,” the person on the other end of the line says. “What?”

Aaron frowns, pulls the phone away from his ear, glances at the screen. Shit. Unknown number. He’d just assumed – not many people know this number, and he’d _just_ been texting with Jordy – but never assume. “Sorry. Thought you were Jordy.”

“Not Jordy,” the guy says, and starts busting up laughing.

It’s the laughter that clues Aaron in. He’s watched enough Youtube videos over the past week to know it. Dammit, Danica, give a guy a heads-up. But he’s not going to be the creep who lets on that he recognized a guy by his fucking _laugh_ -

“It’s Pat,” the guy says, through his laughter. “Pat Mahomes. Danica gave me your number, I hope that’s okay?”

 _He_ hopes it’s okay? This guy is too nice to live. Aaron drops into his locker chair and prays for a five-minute reprieve from the chaos surrounding him. “Yeah, of course. Actually I asked Danica to see if she could put us in touch. I just wanted to tell you that I’ve been watching the Series and it’s been fantastic.” There. That sounds good, and appropriately non-stalkery.

“It’s been _awesome_ ,” Mahomes – Pat – says, a reverent edge to his voice. “I don’t know how it is for you guys, but everyone here just, just _believes_. You ever have a game where you just know somehow that things are gonna go your way?”

Aaron knows what he means. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes you get one of those charmed games, and it feels like every ball that leaves your fingertips is going to be a rocket destined straight for a receiver’s hands. “Yeah. That’s pretty special. Couldn’t happen to a better team.”

“You just want Tom Brady to be sad,” Pat says, and that’s so like what Cobb said the other day that Aaron laughs, hard guffaw. 

“Maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing,” he allows. “But you’re the Wisconsin team, so I think I’m contractually obligated to like you.”

Pat laughs again, sunny snorts through his nose, and Aaron is beaming, beaming like a crazy person at his phone in the middle of the Packers locker room.

“Did you watch last night?” Pat asks. “I think I ran harder last night than I have in years. You don’t have to run often either – what’s it like when you do?”

It’s Aaron’s turn to snort. “I don’t look as natural as you do, that’s for sure. I mostly take off running and hope someone like Anthony Barr doesn’t chase me down. At least in baseball you don’t have to worry about someone murdering you.”

“He should’ve been suspended, that was totally a late hit,” Pat says, with sincere-sounding indignation, and that’s it, Aaron is officially half in love with Patrick Mahomes.

“But really,” he says, abruptly, “you’re amazing, and I just wanted to tell you. I know you’ve got a game tonight, and I won’t keep you. I just – I know what it’s like to be where you are, right at the beginning of becoming a household name, and if you ever need something – if you ever need an ear, or advice, or someone to cover for you – let me know.”

Pat’s silent for a moment. “Thanks,” he says, with an intonation that makes Aaron’s brow crease. It’s the first half of a thought, the second half left unvoiced.

A hand lands on his shoulder, heavy and inexorable, and Aaron doesn’t need the “Getting old here, Rodgers,” to know that it’s McCarthy. He’s never found him more annoying than he does right this very second. 

“I gotta go,” he says, holding up his hand to McCarthy in the universal plea for ‘give me a moment’. “Just – kick some butt tonight, for Wisconsin.”

“I pitched last night,” Pat says, and Aaron can hear the smile through the phone. That smile. “My arm's a noodle today, no buttkicking allowed, sorry. Tonight I’m just a cheerleader. But I’ll be the prettiest cheerleader I can be.”

That’s…not a mental image Aaron needs right now, in the middle of a goddamn NFL locker room, with his impatient coach standing right behind his shoulder. Shit. He frantically thinks of Roger Goodell naked, which – does help.

“Okay,” he says, somewhat stifled. “Whatever you need to do, you do. Bring it home for us. I’ll be watching and sending you all the good juju.”

What the fuck. What actually just came out of his mouth.

“Thanks,” Pat says, the smile still in his voice. “Bye.”

“Bye,” Aaron says, and faces his annoyed coach.

~*~

Game 7 is a madhouse.

For one thing, it’s Halloween, and a sizable minority of the crowd has come in costume. Instead of the usual Sox red, there’s a broader rainbow of colors; you can still tell they’re Boston fans, though, because the rainbow is just as drunk as the red always is.

(Look, any teammate of Aaron’s will tell you he has this Thing about Boston. If Pat had pitched for Boston, no crush would have had a _chance_ of survival.)

Pat’s there in the dugout with his team, snapping gum and trading jokes with his catcher and looking completely at ease. (Aaron has all the butterflies for both of them.) ESPN talked to him before the game, pulled him aside for a pregame interview, helped stoke the Mahomes-mania. He’s just so dorky and droll and cute, and damn fucking good at baseball, and he sounds, yes, a little like Kermit the Frog, and Aaron knows he’s not the only person in America with a crush right now.

The game’s a tight one. Yelich homers in the first – Yelich is the best – but Pearce hits a two-run shot in the second to give Boston the lead. The Brewers pull Chacín after two, relying on their bullpen to finish it out. They’re looking at a long seven innings for the pen.

Aaron watches Pat, and wonders what it would be like to have to sit like that, helpless, while his team fought for a championship. He’s never had that particular cross to bear, except when he was injured; he’s never been asked to be a cheerleader and stand on the sidelines, unable to do anything but hope, pray, and will them over the line. He can’t imagine having to turn his team over to a different quarterback for the fourth quarter, and just having to trust that the man could do it, just have to sit back and wait.

Although in a way, doesn’t he do that every time the defense trots out onto the field? He’s just an observer then. He’s felt the uselessness of the bystander, when he’s thrown his heart and soul on the field to get them in a position to win the game, only to have the defense fuck it up. 2015, now there’s a year he’ll never forget, the year his season ended in heartrending fashion. Arizona, Divisional Round, down 7 with less than two minutes left. 4th and 20, last chance, threw a 61-yard pass to save the game. Then, five seconds left in the season, he threw a Hail Mary touchdown that tied the game and sent it to overtime. He did everything he possibly could – and on the first play from scrimmage in overtime, the Packers defense parted like the Red Sea and let Larry Fucking Fitzgerald romp 75 yards downfield. That one – that one hurt.

If Pat loses this one, loses the series because Chacín couldn’t pitch a full start, because his bullpen gave up too many runs to the hungry Sox, because his own hitters couldn’t keep up – this one will hurt, just like that. After everything Pat has done this series, after how stupendously he’s played, he deserves this. He deserves this title.

But no one knows better than Aaron Rodgers, with one single Super Bowl ring on a resume that should have five, that “deserve” has nothing to do with anything.

Pat is on his feet cheering, and Aaron sends a message winging to the sporting gods. _Give him this. Fuck Boston._

~*~

In another universe, it turns into a home run derby for Boston. Pearce hits another, and Betts, and Martinez. Rick Porcello pitches a beauty of a game, and Boston clinches the title 5-1, never in doubt. Aaron watches Pat’s face go blanker and flatter with each inning that goes by, each chance that’s lost, and his heart aches knowing how much Pat’s must hurt. (It’s the first heartbreak that stabs the deepest; the first, when you realize just how much of yourself you’ll sign away, to do everything in your power to make sure it will never happen again.) Fenway goes wild, and the Brewers file out in silence, another year without the crown, another year lost.

In _this_ universe, however, perhaps Aaron’s karma account is in the black after all.

It’s Jesús Aguilar who breaks the chilly pall that’s settled over the Brewers dugout, and over Aaron’s own living room. Aguilar, who rounds on a Porcello pitch and knocks it over the Green Monster with as little fanfare as if it was a routine grounder. Tied at 2-all in the fifth, and sudden hope lives, where Porcello had snuffed it out before.

Then Moustakas singles to right, and Kratz strikes out, and Arcia hits a double. Men on second and third, out of fucking nowhere, and Fenway is restive. Pat’s face is alive again, and Aaron has his fist pressed so hard against his mouth that he accidentally splits his lip with an unwary tooth. Pinch-hitter Santana hits a sacrifice fly to give the Brewers the lead, and it’s on, it’s on. And here’s the top of the order again, here’s Cain, and they’re letting Porcello try to get out of it, they’re letting Porcello try to limit the damage. Aaron can feel for him, if he lets himself – he knows what it’s like to have the team on his shoulders, he knows what it’s like to be Schrodinger’s hero-goat. 

(But he doesn’t let himself feel for Porcello, because his heart is sitting in the Brewers dugout next to Pat.)

Cain works the count like a magician, fouling off pitch after pitch, giving Aaron heart palpitations – and if _he_ has them, Pat’s must be skittering like anything – and on the twelfth pitch of a titanic at-bat, coaxes a walk. Two men on, and Yelich coming up to bat. Yelich! Aaron’s about ready to promise to tattoo the man’s name somewhere, if he can bring this home. Cora’s yanking Porcello, and maybe it all comes down to this, this pitching change, this moment.

(Is this how it feels to be a fan? It’s different on the field, with the focus demanded being so incredibly high, that you don’t have time to feel your feelings, not until afterwards. At the time, all you can think about is the task and tools at hand, and how you’re going to make it happen. There’s no time for butterflies, no space for this wild exhilaration that has Aaron pacing his living room, everything forgotten except this moment, this now.)

On impulse, he pulls his phone out.

 _Yelich at the plate, fifth inning,_ he texts, not letting himself think too much. _No matter what happens next, you’ve had a phenomenal Series. The first of many. You’ve made Wisconsin proud. And I’m a fan for life!_

What made him throw that last bit in? Cringe. But it’s too late now, it’s gone, winged off to Pat’s phone, tucked safely away in his locker. 

Yelich at the plate. Eovaldi on the mound.

Ball. Ball. 2-0. Swing & a miss. 2-1. Ball. 3-1. Foul, just got a piece of it. 3-2, two men on, two men out. 

_This one,_ Aaron implores the universe, _this one_.

It’s not a home run, the ball that puts Yelich in the history books. That would be too Hollywood, too perfect. And it’s not a walkoff – there’s no exuberant crush of players and limbs at home plate, all shouting and screaming and hugging each other. 

It’s just a double in the fifth inning, an ordinary prosaic double, clear and certain from the moment it leaves his bat. Clean and textbook, so beautiful Aaron could kiss it. 

Arcia and Cain come home, and just like that, it’s 5-2 Brewers.

(When the camera cuts to the Brewers dugout, Pat is in Arcia’s arms, his face buried in his shortstop’s shoulder. Aaron bites his split lip, and can’t stop smiling.)

An hour later, it’s official. Jeffress throws a final strike, Bradley swings and misses, and _then_ the dugout boils out onto the field, a team of new-minted champions at the peak of human happiness. 

There’s no feeling like it, no feeling in the entire world, nothing like winning the big one. Aaron catches at the trailing memories of his own moment in the sun, his own blinding incandescent happiness, and beams at every one of those young men out on the field. It’s the first World Series for Milwaukee, the first ever, and if he knows Milwaukee, it’s about to go comprehensively nuts. 

A reporter grabs Pat out of the scrum – brave reporter, she’s half their size and in heels, but she wades in with no respect for personal safety – and brandishes a microphone. “Pat! Pat, what are you feeling right now?”

“No words,” Pat says, grinning ear to ear, his smile brighter than bright. “Just so happy right now. So happy to bring it home for Wisconsin. So proud of the guys.”

Aaron grins back at him, and for one perfect evening, all is right with the world.

 _Congratulations_ , he texts Pat, the word such a pale shadow of what he feels. _You guys are fucking awesome. Drink it all in, every last minute._

~*~

The next day, Aaron has a joy hangover.

It’s Thursday, and they’re flying to Boston tomorrow night. That’ll be fun, with the whole city collectively depressed. Aaron anticipates a schadenfreudy day, with more than a few surly Bostonians. He’s wicked enough to enjoy the prospect.

As he’s changing his shirt after practice, his phone buzzes. 

_thanks_

Then a photo comes through. It’s a little blurry, but it’s a shirtless Pat, the trophy in his arms, kissing it, Yelich’s arm thrown around his shoulders, Arcia laughing in the background, Aguilar obviously drunk and belting out a song.

Aaron shuts his eyes for a second, because, _biceps_ , he’s only a man after all, but he’s grinning by the time he opens them and looks again. 

Cobb grabs his phone.

“Hey!” Aaron says, making an ineffectual grab for it. This is what comes of having a best friend, they feel like they can just take your stuff.

“You’re grinning like a cat that got the cream,” Cobb says, and looks at the photo. “Baseball, huh?”

Aaron takes the phone back. “That could’ve been Danica,” he chides, though his heart’s not in it.

Cobb gives him an unimpressed look. “Like Danica’s dumb enough to send you nudes on a phone Goodell could try to confiscate. You’re too goody two shoes to smash it like Brady.”

Aaron doesn’t feel particularly goody two shoes. Is that what people think of him?

“Anyway,” Cobb says, “I didn’t know you were a baseball man.”

Aaron looks away. “It was a good series. Besides, Wisconsin, man.”

Cobb snorts, unimpressed. “You’re a California boy, Rodgers.”

A long time ago, maybe. “Wisconsin now,” he says, and tucks the phone into his pocket.

~*~

Maybe it’s because Aaron’s old, and starting to lose his ability to give a fuck. Maybe he’s caught up in Mahomes-mania, like the rest of Wisconsin. Maybe he wants to stick a finger in Boston’s eye. Maybe – maybe he just wants to give in to his crush, just a little, just in this little harmless way.

However it happens, when they touch down in Boston and check into the hotel, Aaron changes his travel suit and goes out to dinner with Cobb and Davante wearing a Mahomes jersey.

It’s all over Twitter by the time they get back to the hotel, and Cobb is reading out his favorite tweets from Boston fans telling Aaron exactly what he can do with himself and with that jersey. They roll into the lobby laughing, the desk attendant already giving them stankeye. 

“Mr. Rodgers,” the attendant says. “There’s a message for you.”

“Go on,” Aaron says, waving Cobb and Davante towards the elevator. He knows Cobb wants to call his wife before it gets too late. Whatever this kid wants, it’ll just take a minute.

“Yeah?” he says, heading up to the counter, not rude, but not polite either. Honestly, he’d have told the kid to send it up to his room, except there’s a bare possibility it’s from Pat. Pat ruled this city, just the night before last. Maybe he left something for Aaron, knowing he was rolling into town. A long shot, but perhaps. “What’s the message?”

The kid nods, which makes no sense. 

Until Aaron realizes he was nodding _towards_ something, and turns around to see Pat unfolding himself from a shadowed couch in the corner.

“Hey,” Pat says, when Aaron reaches him. There’s a soft smile on his face, that quirks when his eyes drag over Aaron’s clothing choices. “Nice jersey.”

“Figured I should put some respect on your name,” Aaron says. Yelich was the series MVP, because of course he was, but if it hadn’t been for Yelich, it definitely should’ve been Pat. Without Pat, Boston has another fucking title. Without Pat, that whole series would have been over in five games. 

“Thanks,” Pat says, that smile still hovering on his face. Aaron isn’t surprised to find that it makes his knees even weaker in person than it did through the TV. “It looks good on you.”

And that – Aaron is only a man, and he’s been traveling today, and it’s been a long week, and he is wholly not equipped to decide whether that was flirting or not right now. “I guess blue could be my color.”

“Maybe I should try green,” Pat says. His eyes are bright. “If you’ve got an extra jersey, I’ll taunt Boston some more for you.”

That…the idea of Pat wearing his jersey short-circuits something in Aaron’s brain. He swallows, and Pat – Pat’s eyes follow the bob of his throat, and fuck. Is he reading the signs _this_ wrong? He knows signs in football, he knows the tells of countless linebackers and cornerbacks and safeties and ends, but he doesn’t know signs here, doesn’t know anything, and he could be about to make a _monumental_ miscalculation. But – but he just – “Yeah,” he says, half-stifled. “Sure. I’ll get you a jersey.”

“I’m leaving in the morning,” Pat says. “I was hungover, and then I stayed an extra day to visit some college friends. And then I saw you were in town, and I thought I’d come by and say hi. And wish you luck.”

That’s a lot of and’s. Maybe Pat is as nervous as he is. Maybe - “Want to raid my mini-bar?” he asks, abrupt. It’s perhaps the least subtle and most cringey line ever. “I mean. Uh. If you want a jersey, most of mine are with the uniform manager, but I’ve got one in my suitcase.”

Pat’s smile has never wavered. “Yeah,” he says. “Lead the way.”

~*~

Aaron changes his mind about thirteen times on the way up the elevator.

First he thinks he’s obviously reading the signs wrong. Pat is a young superstar with the world at his feet, fresh off winning the biggest prize in his sport. What could he possibly want with a guy eleven years older, a guy who had unfashionably stayed in the closet in an era that valued openness? 

Then he thinks that maybe he isn’t. Pat is solid and square next to him, and Aaron is hyperaware of their bodies in the same small space. They’re two professional sportsmen, and the elevator isn’t particularly large, despite the eliteness of this hotel. He can hear the little hitch when Pat sighs, and smell a faint whiff of his cologne. Pat’s standing closer than he needs to. Isn’t he? 

Then he thinks that he’s _completely_ wrong, that Pat is 100% straight and it’s his own crush putting on rose-colored glasses. Guys coming out of college these days, they’re all millennial and shit. They’re more comfortable with their masculinity, they can compliment another guy without getting all threatened, they can even flirt and it doesn’t mean anything. Pat’s probably got some cute blonde chick at home, or maybe a girl in every MLB city. 

Then he thinks that the way Pat smiled at him wasn’t the smile of someone who was 100% straight.

Then he thinks that how would he know, the only gay guy he’s ever been close to, really close to, is himself, and that’s really not an effective way to judge things, because –

And then they’re outside his door, and he’s fumbling for his key card and letting them in.

“I’m just in here,” he says, unnecessarily.

Pat follows him in, pushing the door shut behind him.

“I have a question,” he says.

It’s dark in the entryway to Aaron’s suite. He could turn the light on, but he doesn’t. “Yes?” His voice is a rasp. Fuck.

“Are you gay?”

Funnily enough, for someone who’s been facing gay rumors for years now, nobody ever really dares to ask Aaron that question. They whisper and gossip and insinuate, they talk about the estrangement with his evangelical, Christian, conservative family as if Everyone Knows Why, they point to his bachelorhood (before Danica came to the rescue) and raise a significant eyebrow. But they never usually dare to ask.

He’s not sure if it's been easier or harder that way. Easier, because he hasn’t had to deny it very often. Hasn’t had to lie with a convincing face, hasn’t had to hide his struggles with his sexuality behind a bland straight exterior. Hasn’t had to pretend he even fucking _knows_ what he is, when it took him so long to figure it out himself. (Harder, because you can never really kill rumors. People believe what they want to believe.)

But now Pat is asking, here in the darkness, here within touching distance, and Aaron wants. He wants so much – wants to tell the truth, wants to let go of the burden, wants to fist Pat’s shirt in his fingers and pull him close. He wants more than he knows how to want. 

It’s been too long without an answer.

“Because,” Pat says, and he sounds nearer, “I am. Well. I like both. But mostly guys.”

“Yeah?” It’s barely voiced, a husk of a sound.

There’s a hand on his elbow. Pat’s pitching hand, big and sure. “Yeah,” Pat breathes, his voice just as soft.

And Aaron has to close his eyes for a second, because this man is just – he just puts it right out there, unafraid. 

Pat pushes, gently, slides his hands up to Aaron’s biceps and pushes him backwards until he hits the wall. He’s taller than Aaron, just slightly, and when he steps into Aaron’s space, they fit. Aaron’s dated tiny girls before, always been the bigger one, and when he turns his head up slightly to follow the glint of Pat’s eyes in the dim light, he swallows hard at the feeling of it.

“Don’t punch me,” Pat says, the sound a whispered half-laugh, and leans in.

His lips are dry on Aaron’s, and Aaron can’t breathe. He sucks in air through his nose, hard, and Pat’s calloused fingers stroke his cheek, gentle.

Then all at once, it feels like lightning ran up Aaron’s spine, crackling into his fingertips. He’s kissing a guy. He’s _kissing_ a guy. He’s kissing a _guy_ , and not just any guy, but the guy he’s spent a week crushing on and jerking off to, a guy he thought was unobtainable, a guy who is, against all odds, in his hotel room, pushing him up against a wall like the best kind of fever dream.

Aaron gasps against Pat’s lips, and then brings a hand up to the back of Pat’s neck. He can _touch_ , and oh – he opens his mouth against Pat’s, and Pat doesn’t wait to be told twice. He can put his arm around Pat, can slide his hand down Pat’s strong back, down to the swell of his jeans, and Pat grins against his mouth, uses his weight to press Aaron into the wall less gently this time. 

“I asked you a question,” he says, his voice gravel, his mouth a hot brand beneath Aaron’s ear.

“Shut up,” Aaron says. “I’m wearing your _jersey_.”

And that makes Pat kiss him again, and Aaron never wants it to stop.

~*~

“I haven’t really…done this much before,” he mutters, some time later.

It’s an admission that costs him something, but it’s about to be incredibly obvious.

Pat looks down at him, his eyes dark, his tongue darting out over his wet lips. “Do you want to?”

“Fuck yes,” Aaron says, complete and shameless truth.

Pat grins, something predatory slipping into that bright smile. “That’s all that really matters.”

~*~

Pat’s body is a revelation, as is the free, joyful way he looks at, touches, and worships Aaron’s. With Pat, there is no half-forgotten homophobic childhood conditioning, no adult constrictions. With Pat, there is only Pat, and Aaron, and the two of them intertwined. Pat kisses with the single-minded purpose that Aaron surveys a football field, and Aaron shoves everything else out of his mind, turns off the mental hamster wheel that is his brain, and fills his every sense with Pat.

If this is all he will ever have – one blissful night with a gorgeous man, one moment of freedom before he has to reassume the role he has played for so long – then he will make the most of it, he will drown in each iota. He _wants_ , with the hunger of a man long-starving, and Pat meets every move with an equal hunger. They are well-matched, here in their long night, and Aaron thinks that if he has a soul, it must be singing.

There’s moonlight coming in through a gap in the curtains, and it falls across Pat’s face, thrown back in the pillows. “Move, dammit,” Pat chokes out, his hands coming out to fasten vice-like on Aaron’s arms. “Fucking _move_.”

Aaron knows how to take direction. He leans down and kisses Pat, deep and dirty and beautiful, and obeys orders.

~*~

Pat should leave Aaron’s room, after. There’s no universe in which Aaron should wake the next morning with Pat warm and solid behind him, curled around the long stretch of his spine, Pat’s arm thrown securely over Aaron’s chest. Pat’s breath snuffles against the back of Aaron’s neck, and Aaron closes his eyes, unexpectedly overcome.

This is what the youth of today believe in. They believe in freedom, in joy, and fuck the consequences. They don’t see what this could mean, the price you might have to pay for these precious moments, these beautiful minutes that Aaron already knows he will long for fiercely in the years to come –

“Stop thinking so loud.”

“You can hear me thinking?” If he turns over, Pat will see him in the light. They’re snuggled together in bed, they’ve done the filthiest things to each other all night long, they’re naked and Aaron at least has morning wood, and yet turning over and facing Pat would be nudity and vulnerability on a different level. He stays faced away, with Pat’s mouth against his neck.

“Your whole body is thinking,” Pat says. “Here,” he touches between Aaron’s shoulders, “and here,” his abs, “and here,” his quads. “You’re so tense, you’re about to explode right out of bed.”

It’s morning. That magical night is over. They’re back to the real world.

“I just,” he says, and tries to find words. Because he owes Pat this much. Because Pat came into his life like a burst of sunshine, and gave him a gift he never would’ve dared to ask for. For Pat, he will try to open a part of himself he closed long ago. “How can you – not care? How can you, just, _be gay_ , and not – not care what it might mean for you, or your future. How it might – impact your team, or change the way the locker room looks at you. How it might keep you from winning the World Series again. How it might lose you friends, or family, or turn the fanbase against you. How can you just – think about all that, and choose –”

When he sputters to a stop, choking on something in his throat, Pat never stops stroking his hip, the callouses on his fingers pleasantly rough.

“Well,” he says, when it’s clear Aaron’s said all he can for the moment. “I guess it’s just never been a question for me. It’s not a choice, it’s who I am. Some of my teammates know, because I dated a guy for a little while. I’m not an activist. I just want to be with who I want to be with, and fuck the rest.”

“But how can you weigh that against – everything else,” Aaron says. He can hear the frayed edge in his own voice.

Pat shrugs, and he’s lying so close it moves Aaron’s shoulders. “I love baseball. I love my team. But we only get one life to live. I won’t be someone I’m not. If that means I pay a price, then I pay a price.”

Aaron thinks about his empty house, his fake girlfriend, his longing for a nice dog and an asshole cat to share his life. He thinks about his friends in the locker room, his stats on the field, his adoring fans. His world is simultaneously so small, and so large. And this secret of his would change everything.

“For what it’s worth,” Pat says, and his hand has moved from Aaron’s hip, has drifted down to curl around Aaron’s dick instead. “I’ve had a massive crush on you since you won the Super Bowl. If you don’t want anything except last night, we’ll just chalk it up to my wild World Series week. Or if you want to be friendly fuckbuddies, I’m good with that. But I won’t promise to be exclusive, and if I get a boyfriend it’ll be over. I’m kinda traditional that way.” 

Aaron feels old. Someone is in his bed talking about being traditional in the same breath as he’s talking about “friendly fuckbuddies”. Also a gay traditionalist feels like an oxymoron. Millennials are trippy.

But it sounds like Pat’s not done, despite the pause. “Or?” Aaron prompts, automatically.

“Or,” Pat says, giving Aaron’s dick a lazy, amazing stroke, “you can invite me to the game tomorrow.”

Aaron knows he freezes. He can’t help it. It’s a bodily reaction, like a deer caught in headlights.

“Even America’s favorite quarterback,” Pat says, so soft, “is entitled to some happiness.”

There’s something in Aaron’s throat. His face is pressed into his pillow.

Pat leans down, kisses his shoulder. “I’m gonna take a shower. You think about it.”

Then Aaron’s bed is empty, and when he belatedly turns his head, all he sees is Pat’s ass vanishing around the corner towards the bathroom.

~*~

It’s not that simple. If anyone should know that it’s not that simple, it’s Aaron, who’s faced gay rumors since he arrived in the League, who gets called arrogant and whiny and full of himself for the crimes of believing in his own talent and being upset when he isn’t able to make full use of it, who can’t blink without being the target of the paparazzi, who became estranged from his family and the media practically live-streamed it, who’s started to lie and lie and lie again out of sheer bloody desperation for some peace.

He doesn’t even _know_ Patrick Mahomes. He knows the way he holds his body preternaturally still when a foul ball arcs towards fair territory; he knows the way he explodes with joy when his team wins a game; he knows the way his face lights up like a sunrise when he smiles. He knows the focused way he kisses, the hitch in his breath when you use your teeth under his ear, the wicked glint in his eyes when he’s got his mouth around your dick. He knows the kindness in his voice, and the playfulness in his banter, and the spontaneity in his laughter. He knows that even though he doesn’t know him, he trusts him; he knows that he wants to know more, wants to know every last page of Pat’s book, wants to spend every hour it takes to read them.

But he doesn’t know Pat Mahomes. He only met him yesterday. And most of the rest of his life is still in front of him. It’s an irreversible choice Pat holds out to him so temptingly, with the bulletproof confidence of youth.

_Even America’s favorite quarterback is entitled to some happiness._

How long has it been since he believed that? 

How long has it been since he was truly happy?

Was it really February 2011? Was it really standing on the field in Arlington, his arms locked around the Lombardi Trophy, the culmination of so much work and sacrifice and heartbreak?

Is football worth _that much_ , are the sacrifices he’s made _that necessary_ , if the last time he was happy was seven years ago?

He lies in his ridiculously large hotel bed and stares at the ceiling, makes lists of the pros and cons in his head, as he has done so many times over the years since he first understood who he was.

Cons:

  * Homophobic abuse
  * Unwelcome media sensation
  * Family upset
  * Lose fans
  * Lose endorsements
  * Become “the first NFL gay” forever
  * Might lose friends
  * Might lose the locker room
  * Distraction from football



Pros:

  * Can live the truth
  * Can fall in love
  * Can try to build a life with someone
  * No more hiding
  * No more lying
  * Can be happy?



For the first time since he started making these lists, he no longer feels the gut-deep revulsion the con list used to give him.

So he loses some fans. Fuck those homophobes. So he loses some endorsements. Fuck those homophobes, and he’ll pick up others because gay is cool now. So he becomes “the first NFL gay” – a) he’s definitely not the first one, he’d just be the first one to be out while playing, and b) who the fuck cares; for most other players, that might be their all-consuming legacy, but Aaron is not most other players, and his legacy on the field dwarfs his legacy in the bedroom. So he upsets his family, they’re already estranged and already angry because they know the truth, even if he hasn’t shamed them by publicly acknowledging it yet. So he “distracts from football” – they’ll get over it, guys are distracting from football all the time and nobody treats it like a capital offense if they’re good enough. Aaron’s good enough. 

Really the only things he truly still cares about, if he drills down to bare truth, are “might lose friends” and “might lose the locker room”. Easy to say “fuck those homophobes” for the haters in the general public, but when they’re guys he knows and loves, it’s a lot harder. Some of those guys were raised that way, just like he was. If he wasn’t gay, if he’d never really questioned his childhood conditioning, if he’d never known any gay guys, would he too still have the societally-trained distaste for gay people that his cultural upbringing had given him? 

But are those friendships really friendships, if Aaron’s lying to them about something so fundamental? And if the choice is between continued secrecy and a chance at happiness, are those friendships worth more than the entire pros list?

If he does this, he’s not doing this for Pat, however much he still goes dizzy with the flash of memory from last night, with the way Pat felt, with the bone-deep rightness of having a man in his arms, with the way Pat laughed and the way Pat kissed and the way Pat whispered in his ear.

If he does this, he’d be doing it for the wide-eyed kid who sat on the bench behind Brett Favre, who watched Brett party and drink and send dick pics to cute reporters, who watched Brett get away with everything and never a peep because he was a good fucking quarterback. He’d be doing it for that kid, who knew without ever having to be told that if he breathed a word about his attraction to guys, he was done in the league. He’d be doing it for that kid, who loved the game so much that everything else ceased to matter, who sacrificed himself without a second’s hesitation.

That kid would’ve been drummed out of the league in a heartbeat.

Aaron Rodgers – Aaron Rodgers can’t be.

_Even America’s favorite quarterback is entitled to some happiness._

No guarantee he’ll find it, even if he takes this step. No guarantee Pat is the one for him, however compatible they may be in bed. There’s more to life than that. 

But there would be a chance with Pat. And if not Pat, there’s half a country out there to look for true love in, if he’s able to look at the right people.

It’s 2018. It’s not 2005. He’s not that wide-eyed 22-year-old kid, sacrificing everything on the football altar. The country is older too, more accepting. Millennials don’t give a fuck.

Somewhere out there is a man Aaron could fall in love with. Somewhere out there is a man to love, to laugh with, to live with, to dream with, to build a home with, to propose to, to marry, to raise children with, to grow old with. 

Maybe that somewhere is the shower in Aaron’s hotel suite. Maybe it’s not.

He picks up his phone. He’s slow this morning, his fingers hesitating as they find the contact he’s looking for, but then the phone’s ringing.

“What could you possibly want this early?” Cobb’s voice is aggrieved, but he picked up on the first ring. Because he’s Aaron’s best friend, Aaron’s brother. If Aaron ever needs to hide (Tom Brady and Anthony Barr's) bodies, he’s calling Cobb. 

“Sorry,” Aaron says. He glances at the clock on the bedstand. Shit. Five A.M. No wonder Cobb’s salty. “Sorry. I just – have a question.”

Cobb makes an affirmative grunt.

“You know the rumors about…about me.” He doesn’t need to spell them out, at least he hopes he doesn’t need to. He’s got fraying control of himself as it is. “If they – I was just wondering, if they were true, what would you say?”

Cobb is silent for a long moment. “The rumors about you being a cocky ass who thinks he’s God’s gift to football?”

“Cobb.” The laugh catches in his throat, sticks there.

“Aiyda’s got a cute cousin,” Cobb says, finally. “He’s a bit full of himself, but then, I mean. You’d probably get along. I’d say, want me to get his number for you?”

“Cobb.” 

Cobb must hear the thickness in his voice. There’s sounds over the phone, Cobb sitting up. “You ok? You need me to come over there?”

“I’m good,” Aaron chokes out. “I’m good, Cobb.”

Cobb makes a thoughtful noise. “This does explain that shirtless Mahomes picture on your phone.”

“I’m hanging up on you,” Aaron says, and does.

~*~

Pat is standing naked by the counter, shaving, when Aaron opens the bathroom door. His eyes meet Aaron’s in the mirror.

Aaron steps into the bathroom, takes one more step, another. He fits himself against Pat’s back, resting his chin on Pat’s shoulder. 

“Come back to bed,” he says, never breaking eye contact in the mirror. 

Pat puts the razor down, puts a hand over Aaron’s, where Aaron has wrapped his arms around Pat’s chest. “Yeah? You got plans there, big guy?”

“And wear my jersey to the game tomorrow,” Aaron says.

Pat turns in his arms, surge of energy and blinding smile, and kisses him.

~*~

_coda_  
New Year’s Eve, 2021

Aaron isn’t a musicals kind of gay guy. (He likes the theatre, but singing isn't his thing.) It takes a lot of persuasion, and a lot of blowjobs, for Pat to persuade him to visit a local production, with the two of them as incognito as two famous handsome professional athletes can be. Aaron can sort of pull off “basic white guy,” if nobody looks too closely, but Pat is always unmistakably Pat. Particularly in Milwaukee, where everybody loves him with a fervency Aaron vaguely feels he should be jealous of. Three World Series titles in four years will do that for you.

As for Aaron, the Packers are 14-1, with their last game in Minnesota this weekend. Technically Aaron shouldn’t be in Milwaukee on a Thursday night, with a game on Sunday. But with the #1 seed locked up and nothing to gain, LaFleur declared after last week’s epic comeback against Seattle that Jordan would get his first start in Minnesota. Aaron seized the chance to get permission to spend New Year’s Eve with Pat.

(They don’t officially live together, not yet. Pat has his apartment in Milwaukee, and Aaron still has his house in Green Bay. They’re both locked in to their teams for the long haul. But Milwaukee’s less than a 2-hour drive from Green Bay – “ninety minutes for me,” Pat always says, irrepressible – and the distance is manageable. And during their offseasons they’re together more often than not, usually in Green Bay, because Aaron’s asshole cat Jorah doesn’t like car rides.)

Pat’s fresh off his third World Series, already a legend at the ripe old age of twenty-six, and Aaron – well, it’s been a magical season for the Packers, after last year's heartbreak in the Super Bowl. They’re 14-1, and will almost surely be 15-1 after Sunday, knock on wood. Aaron’s looking to the postseason, and daring to hope.

But whether they win or lose – whether Pat is shouting for him in the stands in Los Angeles on February 6, or whether they’re watching it from home and heckling the competitors, or whether they’ve decided to fuck off to a Caribbean island and drink mojitos and let Davante pet-sit Jorah – Aaron will be all right. 

Aaron will be happy.

He turns to Pat as they walk down the street. Their hands are tangled together, and his boyfriend’s scarf is cheerfully, technicolor gold, as bright as his smile. 

“You do know,” he says, “that if I’m Motel, that makes you Tzeitel?”

Pat shrugs, grinning at him, then answers by pushing him against a handy lightpost, leaning up for a quick kiss.

“Get a room!” a fellow musical-lover heckles, passing by.

It’s not a bad idea. There’s champagne chilling in the fridge, and Pat's big bed awaits. They’ve got an hour left in 2021, and a new year to ring in. 

Whatever the future brings for them, Aaron intends to live every moment.

“Come on,” Aaron says, slinging an arm around Pat’s shoulders. “Let’s go home.”

~*~

**Author's Note:**

>   * I decided to put Pat on the Brewers instead of the Tigers (who actually drafted him, way down in the 37th round) for a few reasons. 1) A Pat who chose baseball would have been taken far, far higher than the 37th round, 2) I wanted Aaron and Pat to both be on Wisconsin teams and within a reasonable distance of each other, and 3) I've always felt badly for the Brewers after the rumor that the Dodgers stole their signals in the 2018 NLCS, and perhaps the series. (In real life, the Dodgers beat the Brewers in the NLCS in 7 games, then lost the World Series to the Red Sox in 5.) So I decided to create an alternate universe which put Pat in Wisconsin _and_ gave the Brewers their happy ending after all.
>   * If you're a Bostonian, sorry for all the anti-Boston stuff. Aaron turned out to have Feelings. (Vikings fans, on the other hand, will have no need for an apology, as they would expect nothing different out of Aaron.)
>   * The whole bit about Bakhtiari and the Catan games is true. He really is the Catan grandmaster who got the team into it.
>   * "Even a poor tailor is entitled to some happiness!" is, of course, Motel's line from _Fiddler on the Roof_ , the line that finally makes Tevye see him as a man and consider allowing his daughter Tzeitel to marry him. My Pat, who likes musicals, adapted the line, and took his boyfriend to the show.
> 



End file.
